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UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

vancouversun.com

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Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#51

Post by adrianmonk »

derefr wrote: post #41

I wonder if they controlled for... why people choose to live where they live. I.e., this wasn’t an RCT; they could just assign people to live near highways or not. So the people who are living near highways are there for a reason. Are residences near highways, perhaps farther from certain other things, like city centres? Such that a certain type of person (people with pre-existing [perhaps subclinical] mental issues…

> “living near a highway” sounds a lot like a euphemism for “living in the middle of nowhere”, since by definition all arterial roads connecting “somewhere” to “somewhere” through “nowhere” are highways.

The study uses a definition based on average vehicles per day that travel the road. I think you're interpreting "highway" like a road that connects two cities, which is one of the word's many meanings, but they are using a different definition.

By using a traffic-based definition, this study is roughly counting the number of (running) cars that you're near.

Also, with their definition, people in urban or rural areas can be either near or not near a highway. If you live in the middle of a city but you're removed from high-traffic roads by neighborhood streets with low traffic, you're not near a highway.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#53

Post by mmhsieh »

drcross wrote: post #43
papito wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quality of air definitely matters, but I wonder what actually has more negative effect - poor ppm levels or the stress from the noise. People think that's not a big deal and you just get used to it, but the truth is, your brain is ALWAYS processing that noise in the background as a source of potential danger, taking a long-term tall on your mental state. I work in an office with poor CO2 PPM levels, and constant nois…

The depth and breadth of neurological issues could not possibly be explained simply by noise. Humans lived in close quarters for most of our existence which would have included a lot of elevated noise levels.

there might be a different set of neurological effects caused difference between the noise spectra of natural sources, to include human generated noise, and the unnatural sources like car traffic. the color spectrum of natural scenes has been found to have different impacts than that of manmade urban scenes.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#54

Post by dsfyu404ed »

samatman wrote: post #38
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A set of pads typically lasts about as long as a set of tires (at the very least they're within a factor of two of each other). Compare relative volumes of materials. Brake dust is always going to be a much smaller source of particulate matter in the air than tire dust. FWIW if the fumes/particulate from burning them are any indication tires are probably way nastier than brakes.

First paragraph is perfectly reasonable. Second paragraph, though: I've never been around a brake pad fire, but I'd rather breathe vulcanized rubber than "metal shavings of copper, steel, graphite, and brass bonded with resin": https://www.yourmechanic.com/article/what-are-brake-pads-mad...

In my non-chemist, non-doctor opinion the circumstantial evidence points to brake dust being way less bad than tire dust.

Being inert in the presence of most common substances tends to correlate well with low toxicity. It's the stuff that chemically reacts to all sorts of things that tends to be the most poisonous.

Tires break down over time under "normal earthly conditions" which includes a lot of the same temperatures and molecules that are found inside the human body. To me this is a massive red flag for toxicity.

High temperature tends to make things react more readily. Most of the stuff in brakes has to be really stable at high temperatures and being stable at high temperatures tends to correlate well with being chemically inert.

The most reactive stuff in brakes are the long complex molecules used to bind it all together. These sorts of molecules are similiar to the molecules used in tires and all sorts of other plastic like things. So all else being equal tires probably have more of the chemically interesting things that cause problems in the human body.

Burning brakes smells way better than burning tires which seems to confirm this (remember, your nose has millions of years of incremental improvement when it comes to indicating what is and isn't suitable to ingest).

And before anyone thinks they're gonna get some easy internet points by saying "but asbestos", the amount of asbestos in brake pads is nonzero (to account for the sketchy unbranded stuff that may or may not use it) but still tiny enough that people working in proximity to it have mostly stopped dropping dead at 60 thanks to lung cancer so I think that however much asbestos is in brake pads it's low enough to not be an issue from a public health POV.

TL;DR I'll take my chances with brakes over tires.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#56

Post by thrwaway69 »

murkt wrote: post #16
mrob wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switching to electric vehicles would reduce brake dust even more, because they use regenerative breaking to avoid using the break pads when possible.

Additionally, roads can be designed in a way that calms vehicle movement instead of accelerate-brake cycle. For example, narrower roads with curves instead of wide straight roads with speed bumps near pedestrian crossings.

Wouldn't that cause friction too? I feel like it might even increase braking more if it's a busy road and people want to move faster.

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#58

Post by ranDOMscripts »

rdtsc wrote: post #23

Once I was talking to a retired real estate agent and they said they had noticed a disproportionate number clients who lived by the highway had lung cancer in their family.

Mesothelioma, perhaps? Asbestos is still used in aftermarket brake pads.[0]

[0]https://www.epa.gov/asbestos/current-best-practices-preventi...

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#59

Post by elchief »

derefr wrote: post #41

I wonder if they controlled for... why people choose to live where they live. I.e., this wasn’t an RCT; they could just assign people to live near highways or not. So the people who are living near highways are there for a reason. Are residences near highways, perhaps farther from certain other things, like city centres? Such that a certain type of person (people with pre-existing [perhaps subclinical] mental issues…

There are multiple major highways in urban greater Vancouver. The Trans Canada is the big one, and Oak street is essentially highway 99 (which becomes the I5)

Re: UBC study links living near highways to risk of neurological disorders

#60

Post by chiefalchemist »

cs702 wrote: post #14

Direct link to study: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-... The researchers found the link between living near highways and future neurological disorders to be independent of income, education, ethnicity, comorbidity, and coexisting medical conditions associated with future neurological disorders (traumatic brain injury, diabetes, hypertension, stroke, coronary heart disease, congestive hear…

Re: Independent of income

Living near a noisy highway is rarely prime real estate. How do we account forincome when there are so few in that subset?

I also wouldn't discount the effect of endless stress. That is, the drone of noise. I recently moved from to a street that's fairly busy. Only in the middle of the night is it quite. I don't like it.

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